


Strike one match in the dark

by Kavi Leighanna (kleighanna)



Series: Ella!Verse [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bittersweet, Christmas, F/M, Family, Kid!Fic, Original Female Characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-08 23:45:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5517572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kleighanna/pseuds/Kavi%20Leighanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not everyone can be with them on Christmas Eve. No one knows that better than Steve and Maria. So they have one tradition, their only set-in-stone one, to honour them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She’s not sure when it happened. Neither of them are particularly attached to any particular holiday – maybe Veterans Day, or the anniversary of SHEILD’s collapse, but they’re not happy days – but somewhere between the chaos of missions, the appearance of aliens and a vaguely mutated computer virus taking over the world, Christmas has come to mean a lot to her and Steve.

There are a lot of good things tied up with Christmas.

Finding Barnes for one.

Getting together for another.

It makes her smile as she looks at the latest picture Steve’s sent from their suite, little Ella tangled up in the ribbons he and Barnes like to use to wrap up gifts. It’ll be their third Christmas with their daughter, a gift Maria values above everything else.

The most unexpected of her gifts.

But, she often thinks that’s rather characteristic of the decision to live her life alongside Captain America.

 _Good luck,_ she writes back to her husband – her husband, dear God. It still kind of throws her for a loop – even as she powers down her computer. She’d promised an early departure tonight, not because it’s Christmas Eve, but because out of all of the big days associated with the holiday, Christmas Eve is the one that means something.

To him and to her.

Work, he’s – _they_ have - taught her somewhere along the way, can always wait.

 

The living room of their suite is exactly the chaos Maria had gleaned from the picture. There’s wrapping paper everywhere and it certainly looks like all of the ribbon has been unraveled. Maria finds mirth bubbling up in her throat, otherwise she thinks she may have a mental breakdown. She’s relaxed since giving birth – because Ella came with _so much stuff_ – but this level still makes her tense and edgy.

“Hey.”

She finds Steve’s head over the edge of the couch and he looks at least a little guilty. He’s got four different colours of ribbon wrapped around his neck and honestly, she’s a little terrified to circle the couch and get her first glimpse of her daughter.

“Mama!”

Well. She can’t deny that. Nor can she deny that the picture of her daughter as she rounds the edge of the couch makes her outright grin. “Did you find the ribbons, Ella bean?”

She’s trailing them behind her, really, silver and gold, red and green. Still, Maria catches her daughter easily, lifts her into the air just to hear her giggle. Ella snuggles easily into her shoulder as Maria shifts her grip, supports her against her hip.

“Mama.”

Maria smiles, just a small thing, but one so full of everything her little girl has brought to her life. Not that it had been empty before, not at all. She’d had her work, her own children in the agents she often dealt with. This is a different kind of fulfillment and Ella the best kind of accident.

She looks up when Steve trails a hand down her arm, smiles at him too because _his face_. He does this when he sees them together, like even after three years he cannot believe she said yes to Ella. Sure, it had been a near thing, but _Ella._

“We’ve eaten,” he says. “Leftovers in the fridge. I can clean her up.”

He can and he will, but Maria can multitask. So she nods to the living room. “How about you clean that up, Captain Christmas,” she teases, wipes at a green smudge. There had been a picture of that too, decorating with food colouring icing. They’ve had a busy day. “I’ll untangle the kid.”

He calls out questions about her day as he folds wrapping paper, tries to make some semblance of order in the living room. Maria holds Ella to the counter as she eats, unraveling bits of ribbon as she eats and answers. Her stomach warms, her heart thumping in her chest. Ella gets her fingers in Maria’s peas and Maria just laughs, lets Ella shove a handful in her mouth and picks up the ones she drops.

Eventually, Steve comes back to the kitchen, the living room in order for now. Maria knows come morning it will look like Santa’s workshop puked around the couches, covered the coffee table with paper and bags, but for now, it looks beautiful.

“She’s ready to go,” Steve says, reaching out to tickle Ella’s neck. Their daughter shrieks in laugher, wiggles into Maria’s body where she’s leaning against the counter to keep Ella steady. “Whenever you are.”

“I have to change,” she says quietly, slips another bite of potatoes into her mouth. “Did you get everything?”

His eyes are shadowed when he nods. “We have to go soon, if we want to take her.”

Maria does. So badly. They haven’t the last couple of years, Ella too young, too exhausted after running around all day, but this year, she’d been insistent, maybe adamant. Not that Steve had been exactly against it. This is a tradition that means as much to him as it does to her. “Okay.”

She takes her dinner into the bedroom, changes from her dress to a soft sweater, jeans, thick socks. It’s been a frigid winter and the last thing she wants is to be cold for this.

Steve’s packed Ella up by the time she emerges, just sliding her bright purple coat over her little shoulders, mittens swinging from the arms. Ella beams from beneath her hair and Maria chuckles, brushes it back a little as she squats, tugs the edge of Ella’s coat together.

“Ready, sweetheart?”

“Go, Mama?”

“Yeah,” Maria says. “Daddy and I have a tradition, something we do every year.”

“Fun?”

Maria hums noncommittally. It’s not exactly fun, but it’s important. “Pretty.”

So Ella smiles. She likes pretty things, the lights on the tree, the sparkle of the ribbon. The way the sun glints off her Uncle Bucky’s arm and isn’t that a story for the ages. Barnes had looked utterly flabbergasted when Ella had stroked at the metal and pronounced it ‘pretty’. Bless her daughter.

Steve’s holding out her coat when she’s done zipping Ella’s up to her chin and she lets him slide it up her arms, over her shoulders. “You want the kid or the stuff?”

Maria strokes her hand through Ella’s hair where she’s clinging to Maria’s jeans. “Looks like I’ve got the kid.”

Steve hefts two bags like they’re filled with feathers, one with blankets, extra layers for Ella and a smaller one with everything they’ll need for this.

The memory garden.

Maria fades in and out in the car, watching the lights of the city go by. Ella’s babbling to herself in the back, playing with whatever toy she’s found in the pouch they keep for her. Steve reaches over, rubs her thigh.

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” she says because she is. Melancholy, maybe, but that’s why they do this on Christmas Eve and not Christmas Day. He squeezes her leg.

The parking lot they pull into is dim, but it’s only a parking lot. Steve gathers their things, Maria gathers Ella again and they start the short walk through the snowy trees. Ella’s curled against Maria’s shoulder, sensing, Steve would say, the shift in the mood, the melancholy that always shadows Maria’s heart when she does this.

And then they step into the clearing and Maria feels Ella’s head come up, her entire body going utterly stiff. She vibrates a little, mittened hands clenching on Maria’s hood.

“Mama.”

“I know,” Maria says because it is stunning. Even after years of this tradition, she’s never used to the way the candles look in their lanterns, the piles of them around the feet of the firs. “It’s a memory garden,” she goes on, voice hushed. “Sometimes, there are people who can’t be with us at Christmas.”

Ella’s blue eyes lock on hers when she turns her head, listening so, so closely. Maria adjusts her hat, her scarf.

“When I was a teenager, I had a friend who would light a candle for the people who couldn’t celebrate with her.”

Ella reaches over and Steve steps in, always so good at seeing what Ella needs. She grips his scarf. “We light?”

“Yeah, baby,” Steve murmurs, presses his lips to Ella’s hat. “We’re going to light a candle.”

They wander through the trees until they find one that isn’t quite as bright, a row or so back from the main clearing. Steve puts the bags down, pulls from one the big pillar candle they buy every year. It’s just easier, they know, than trying to light one for every person they miss. Their lists are both so, so long.

He lights the pillar, then a couple of the lanterns. Maria knows they’re for his Ma, Bucky’s mother, too, the eldest Mr. Barnes. There aren’t many people they choose to recognize individually, but those, those are important.

Steve steps back, gets his arm around Maria’s waist, his chest right up against Ella’s back. Ella tries to twist in Maria’s grip, to look at her father.

“Why sad?” Ella asks, a little frown on her face. “All sad.”

“A little,” Steve acknowledges, because it’s true. For all they have, for all of the loved ones they do get to celebrate with, it’s the ones they don’t that can be so very painful. “Sometimes, Ella bean, loving someone hurts. Right here.”

He taps her heart over her coat, and Ella wraps her little hands around his wrist. Her face is solemn, serious, fitting.

“But you know what else?” he goes on, wiggles his fingers against her stomach. It makes Ella giggle, whether she can feel the tickle or not. “Love is patient, and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way.”

They both know there are words, concepts, that Ella is too young to understand, but she watches Steve, enraptured. Maria can’t blame her. Steve like this is a force of nature, and it never ceases to catch her right where she loves him.

“There are three things that will endure – faith, hope and love – and the greatest of these, Ella, is love.” He presses his mouth to her hat, not even Ella herself, but Ella is so still against them both. “I love you.”

“Love,” Ella agrees, her hands still around his wrist, but she leans into Maria’s head, connecting to both of them. “Daddy. Love you.”

Steve wraps around both of them, warm and solid, and Maria hadn’t realized there were tears in her eyes until she feels one drip, freezing and cold down her cheek. Steve wipes it away gently, presses and holds his lips against Maria’s forehead for a long minute.

“I love you,” he says, this time against her skin.

Maria shifts an arm, tangles her hand in his coat, and knows he hears what she can’t say.

She loves them, both of them, with a power and strength even she can’t understand, and there are so many people who can’t be here, so many people she wishes were, but this… This is also perfect.


	2. Chapter 2

Ella is nervous and it’s been making Nathan nervous all day.

She’s not generally a nervous person by nature. She’s contained and patient and methodical. She’s been doing a double major in political science and business while doing side-work for Stark Industries and he’s not sure he’s ever really known Ella’s pulse to so much as blip in panic.

Yet now, curled close to him under his arm, her fingers are tangling together in front of her. She can’t keep her hands still, picking at her coat, loose threads on her jeans.

“El?”

She’s shaking her head even before the syllable is fully out of his mouth. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

She laughs, and it sounds more carefree than it has in the last week. Nathan doesn’t say anything for a few moments, a few beats, then, “This is a big deal for you, isn’t it?”

Because Ella doesn’t get worked up.

Ella’s quiet for a moment before she says. “There isn’t a tradition that matters more to me than this one.”

Nathan can’t help himself. He reaches for her, wraps his hand around hers. Now his heart starts thumping, like there’s a bleed of anxiousness from her into him. “You haven’t told me anything about it.”

“It’s not something I can explain,” she says quietly, but she winds her fingers between his. It’s harder, their fingers thicker because of their winter wear but Nathan thinks she may need it.

She curls into him a little closer, a little tighter before a car he recognizes pulls into the lot. Ella’s parents climb out, Mr Rogers still as broad as ever, Ms Hill still slim and elegant. Some of the tension bleeds wonderfully out of Ella, tucked into his side.

Ms Hill comes for them immediately, arms open to her daughter.

“Ella.”

There are very few things Nathan likes quite as much as seeing Ella with her family. She’s a reserved woman by nature, smart and quiet, but around her family, around _the Avengers_ – which is still something he’s processing three years later – Ella blossoms.

Mr Rogers approaches him, hand outstretched, cloth grocery bag in the other. “Nathan.”

“Sir.”

Mr Rogers chuckles but shakes Nathan’s hand. Nathan goes a bit pink. He’s not ready to call Captain America ‘Steve’ of all things. He can barely look at the man without a healthy dose of hero worship. Mr Rogers reaches out for Ella then, pulls her in close and tight. He shakes Ms Hill’s hand instead, kisses her cheek because that’s how his parents raised him. She rolls her eyes but accepts it.

“How are you?”

“Good,” Nathan answers, looks over in surprise as Ella tucks herself under his arm again. “It was an easy drive.”

“It usually is,” Mr. Rogers agrees with his easy smile. He nods at the trees. “Shall we?”

Nathan loops his arm with Ella’s and lets her lead the way, lets her lead him down the path behind her parents. He leans into her, shoves a little until she stumbles and barks out a laugh. “Tell me now?”

“Almost,” Ella replies, “Just a few more steps.

In a few more steps, Nathan gets a glimpse of one of the most beautiful sights he’s ever had the privilege of seeing. The clearing is glowing, thousands upon thousands of little candles hanging off of trees. “Ella.”

She releases a little laugh. “It’s a memory garden.”

“What?”

She tugs him along, follows her parents. “A memory garden,” she repeats. “People come here every year and light a candle for people who can’t be with them.”

Nathan’s heart thumps once, hard. It’s something they don’t talk about, the number of people who maybe can’t be with Ella, people she loved. People she loves. It had been a hell of a revelation even meeting Ella’s parents, let alone the rest of it, SHIELD and super spies and the Russian spouses that still terrify him.

“In our line of work,” Mr Rogers says, finally coming to a stop in front of a fairly dark tree, “it can be a very long list and it’s important for us to honour those people, whether we know them or not. There have been a lot of sacrifices for all of us to be here today.”

Nathan watches him pull a large pillar candle from the bag, place it at the bottom of the tree. He nestles it in the snow and pulls out a box of matches.

“Dad has a saying,” Ella says right next to his ear as Mr Rogers lights the candle, the flame flickering in the wind. “Well, he has a Bible verse.”

Ms Hill comes up on his other side, her arm brushing his. “Love is patient, love is kind,” she says, quiet and sturdy, the same way Ella is. “It does not envy, it does not boast. It is not proud.”

Mr. Rogers wraps his arm around his wife. “Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

“There are three things that will endure,” Ella murmurs, tucked in as close as she can get, eyes on the flickering flame of the candle. “Faith, hope and love.” She looks up at him, her eyes glowing. “And the greatest of these is love.”

He leans down and kisses her, can’t do anything else. He has no idea if her parents are watching and tries hard not to think about it. There’s a knot in his throat, and his stomach is a mess, but Ella is here, she’s real and she has him. He is here and he loves her, completely and unequivocally.

“You have me,” he says after a moment. “Ella, you have me.”

She smiles.


End file.
